Are any of you using the Office preview? How have you found it? I see that you can use it alongside office 2011. Does it make any changes to the file format - i.e. if I work on a file in the Office 2016 preview, will I still be able to work with it in Office 2011?
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MS Office 2016 preview... just how buggy is it?
- Thread starter stagmeister
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I've only used Word, but the most frustrating bug that I've found is that all shortcut keys (including arrows) stop working after changing certain styles, requiring a quit and relaunch (even closing and reopening the document isn't sufficient). It also pops up the "New Document" window when opening existing ones.
I've reported both of those issues to Microsoft so hopefully they'll be fixed soon. I have no idea about the file formats.
I've reported both of those issues to Microsoft so hopefully they'll be fixed soon. I have no idea about the file formats.
Excel used to have problems zooming in and out. Fixed now, and it's pretty stable.
The newest update to Word is having a weird bug where the graphics corrupt, and sometimes you have to restart it to make it stop acting up.
Even with the bugs they're heaps better than the 2011 versions.
But it's pretty stable overall. Pages and Numbers are buggy as hell though. Crashing all the time. Pages was using 16 GB of memory just a while ago.
The newest update to Word is having a weird bug where the graphics corrupt, and sometimes you have to restart it to make it stop acting up.
Even with the bugs they're heaps better than the 2011 versions.
But it's pretty stable overall. Pages and Numbers are buggy as hell though. Crashing all the time. Pages was using 16 GB of memory just a while ago.
I've used Word, Powerpoint, and Excel. Excel has crashed on exit a few times, but nothing major. All seem pretty stable. I'm not sure all the eventual features have been implemented (is the drawing canvas supposed to be gone from Word?) but they're good, and worth the price of an Office 365 subscription.
I lost all ability to Copy/Paste in Excel and was unable to recover it
Made it unusable for me even after a reinstall, so I've since abandoned the Preview
Made it unusable for me even after a reinstall, so I've since abandoned the Preview
I've used Word and Excel several times with the new builds, neither are ready of prime time IMO. I have not used PowerPoint in the new suite yet.
I have had no issues with Word yet. It's missing direct tie-ins (references) to macros and VB. For simple work, Word works well. I've composed several simple (read: word processing) documents and have had a few crashes. For complex work, I will not rely on it yet.
For Excel, it chokes on larger files. The Mac Office app versions are still, sadly like the 2011 version, 32-bit - the same files in Excel 2013 (Win, 64-bit) work fine. The same files in Excel 2013 (Win, 32-bit) also choke - however, at least on the Windows platform I have choices (of application installs). And, of course, the 32-bit Mac application is, by that architectural restriction not "allowed" access to very powerful Add-Ins.
As for Outlook, there's no parity at all. In Office 2013 there's several connection options outside the realm of the Mac Office Beta. The latter is restricted to IMAP and EWS; the Win versions of Office have several other connection options, including EAS.
I have had no issues with Word yet. It's missing direct tie-ins (references) to macros and VB. For simple work, Word works well. I've composed several simple (read: word processing) documents and have had a few crashes. For complex work, I will not rely on it yet.
For Excel, it chokes on larger files. The Mac Office app versions are still, sadly like the 2011 version, 32-bit - the same files in Excel 2013 (Win, 64-bit) work fine. The same files in Excel 2013 (Win, 32-bit) also choke - however, at least on the Windows platform I have choices (of application installs). And, of course, the 32-bit Mac application is, by that architectural restriction not "allowed" access to very powerful Add-Ins.
As for Outlook, there's no parity at all. In Office 2013 there's several connection options outside the realm of the Mac Office Beta. The latter is restricted to IMAP and EWS; the Win versions of Office have several other connection options, including EAS.
Word: The biggest headache I've had is all of my fonts don't show in the font dropdown menu. I have to use Format - Fonts to access my custom OTF and TTF fonts. Other than that it's been stable.
Excel: Selecting a range of cells and scrolling off the current selection crashes Excel every time. For example, I have a column of 100 currency values, but there are a few blanks. I select the cell below the last value and click Autosum, which selects the last cell upwards to the first blank cell. If I try to scroll up to drag the selection further, crash, every time. I've also had a few crashes building graphs and chats, but usually a second try and it works.
Outlook: I haven't had any trouble with various email accounts like Outlook.com and Gmail. But there's no way to access or sync contacts or calendars outside an Exchange account. Without CalDAV and CardDAV support, Outlook is 1Gb of wasted space.
All of these issues have been reported to Microsoft via the smiley face feedback feature and Microsoft Support forums.
To answer the OP's file format question, I can open/edit the same DOCX and XLSX files across Office 2016 Mac, Office 2011 Mac, Office 2010 Windows, Office for iOS, and Office Online. Never had an issue or corruption.
Excel: Selecting a range of cells and scrolling off the current selection crashes Excel every time. For example, I have a column of 100 currency values, but there are a few blanks. I select the cell below the last value and click Autosum, which selects the last cell upwards to the first blank cell. If I try to scroll up to drag the selection further, crash, every time. I've also had a few crashes building graphs and chats, but usually a second try and it works.
Outlook: I haven't had any trouble with various email accounts like Outlook.com and Gmail. But there's no way to access or sync contacts or calendars outside an Exchange account. Without CalDAV and CardDAV support, Outlook is 1Gb of wasted space.
All of these issues have been reported to Microsoft via the smiley face feedback feature and Microsoft Support forums.
To answer the OP's file format question, I can open/edit the same DOCX and XLSX files across Office 2016 Mac, Office 2011 Mac, Office 2010 Windows, Office for iOS, and Office Online. Never had an issue or corruption.
There's some good stuff here, including things that used to be, or should be, in Office, but aren't there in the previews released to date. IIRC, Microsoft only added in many keyboard shortcuts in the last update or two. Does anybody know of a list of added or removed features from Office 2016 for Mac? I looked at Microsoft's Community site and it wasn't much of a help.
Addendum:
The latest update (v15.10) has fixed most of my issues. Fonts now show in the drop down menu in Word and Excel. Excel doesn't crash anymore when scrolling with cells selected. Both seem a little faster too.
Outlook is still Outlook. It is a lot faster than Mail on my IMAP accounts and I think I figured out why. Outlook only downloads the headers for emails in my various folders and then only downloads the full contents when a message is selected. Mail syncs the entire folder directory including message contents. Once Mail is sync'd, it runs fast but that 3-4 minute wait sometimes makes me think it's hung up.
The latest update (v15.10) has fixed most of my issues. Fonts now show in the drop down menu in Word and Excel. Excel doesn't crash anymore when scrolling with cells selected. Both seem a little faster too.
Outlook is still Outlook. It is a lot faster than Mail on my IMAP accounts and I think I figured out why. Outlook only downloads the headers for emails in my various folders and then only downloads the full contents when a message is selected. Mail syncs the entire folder directory including message contents. Once Mail is sync'd, it runs fast but that 3-4 minute wait sometimes makes me think it's hung up.
Have you lost any data as a result of it or does it recover from where it left off like Office 2011 does?
I've been using the first preview and 15.10.1. I have to say I'm surprised how many major bugs there are in the basic functionality. I've been mostly using Excel and PowerPoint, and out of those Excel is way more buggier.
Powerpoint has suddenly lost all images from the master slide, replaced with broken red crosses that can't be removed. Also it has suffered from saving problems - suddenly it says the file is somehow locked, then trying to save with a different name you get just "Document not saved" dialog box, that is it.
Excel has numerous bugs in very basic usage.
-Scrolling is still quite difficult, if you try to pull from a cell corner downwards I usually jump several thousands of lines at ones
-Filter row is broken, for instance it doesn't show different values are selectable from the column
-Freeze pane is broken, sometimes it is impossible to scroll the first rows after the freeze pane into view with mouse, only by keyboard, sometimes the first row of freeze pane gets duplicated.
-Copy&paste a cell containing a formula is unreliable! I was just yesterday dragging-from-corner a cell with a formula, it would fill the formula. Then cmd-C, cmd-V elsewhere.. it worked.. but randomly it would quit pasting the formula and start pasting the value! Have to manually check every cell that I paste.
I've reported these all to MS via the feedback system, but I'm really boggled at how basic Excel functionality can be so broken. It is as if it was intentional so that people could not use the preview version
Powerpoint has suddenly lost all images from the master slide, replaced with broken red crosses that can't be removed. Also it has suffered from saving problems - suddenly it says the file is somehow locked, then trying to save with a different name you get just "Document not saved" dialog box, that is it.
Excel has numerous bugs in very basic usage.
-Scrolling is still quite difficult, if you try to pull from a cell corner downwards I usually jump several thousands of lines at ones
-Filter row is broken, for instance it doesn't show different values are selectable from the column
-Freeze pane is broken, sometimes it is impossible to scroll the first rows after the freeze pane into view with mouse, only by keyboard, sometimes the first row of freeze pane gets duplicated.
-Copy&paste a cell containing a formula is unreliable! I was just yesterday dragging-from-corner a cell with a formula, it would fill the formula. Then cmd-C, cmd-V elsewhere.. it worked.. but randomly it would quit pasting the formula and start pasting the value! Have to manually check every cell that I paste.
I've reported these all to MS via the feedback system, but I'm really boggled at how basic Excel functionality can be so broken. It is as if it was intentional so that people could not use the preview version
IT IS EXTREMELY BUGGY AND SUCKS
EXCEL KEEPS CLOSING ON ME ALL THE TIME//// DO NOT UPGRADE YET/// LIKE ALL MICROSOFT CRAP YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY WAIT A FEW YEARS///
I NOW HAVE TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO DOWNGRADE BECAUSE I RELY ON EXCEL FOR WORK AND THIS CRASHES AT LEAST 4-5 times per DAY
((((((Too bad because once upon a time long long ago I loved microsoft.....
I used the preview when it first went public, and bought an Office 365 subscription when the regular release came out. Yes, the apps will crash once in a while, but they're pretty stable. I have a few issues; a keyboard shortcut I've tried to set doesn't work, and I may be the only person who misses the drawing canvas. But overall, I've had a very good experience with the software.